Flavour Balancing

Within the same vein of understanding how spices interact and enhance/take away from one another, the five flavours we experience do the same thing; which are:

• Salty/Unami

• Sweet

• Spicy

• Bitter

• Sour

This chart explains the way the five flavours work together quite well, so I won’t reinvent the wheel, but here’s a quick summary of the concepts:

• Salty and bitter balance each other (ie. if you have too much of one, use the opposite flavour to balance out the dish)

• Sour balances  →  spice  (spicy tacos, add some lime juice)

• Sweet and bitter balance each other (dark chocolate)

• Spicy and sweet balance each other (like a delicious Thai stir fry)

• Sweet and sour balance each other (like on Mcnuggets...mmm)

• Sour → enhances salt

• Sweet and salty enhance each other (chocolate covered pretzels for the WIN).

Understanding how flavour profiles work together - you guessed it - comes from practice! But it is helpful to know these general rules about balancing and enhancing flavours so that you know how to correct a dish if something is tasting off.

Another good skill to develop is tasting a dish as you’re cooking it to see if it requires a little a dash of of a counterbalancing ingredient or something to enhance the flavour further.